4.2.2.24. PEPPOL Gateway In – Babelway

This gateway allows to receive files from the PEPPOL network.

PEPPOL

The PEPPOL project was started in 2008 with the objective to enable businesses to communicate electronically with any European government institution in the procurement process. Seven years later, PEPPOL standard is gaining traction by the European governments but also within the industry. The peppol.eu website lists more than 100 certified Peppol Access Point providers, and the number continues to grow every day.

The three main components of the PEPPOL architecture are :

The Access Point (AP) : responsible to send and receive documents for a PEPPOL participant
The Service Metadata Publisher (SMP) : registry containing the Participant AP information. It tells you which access point must be contacted to send document of certain type to a PEPPOL participant
The Service Metadata Locator (SML) : the PEPPOL DNS Server. It tells you in which SMP a PEPPOL participant is registered

PEPPOL In Gateway

Participant

A PEPPOL Participant (the receiver) must be assigned to a 'PEPPOL In Gateway'. Typically, a unique gateway is associated with each participant identifier. However, multiple gateways for the same participant identifier may be configured if mutually exclusive routing is utilized. This configuration is permitted provided that distinct sets of Document Types are registered on each gateway (e.g., Invoices on one, Orders on another) so that routing conflicts are avoided.

The identifier value is the value identifying the PEPPOL participant in a given identification scheme. Most of the time this is a national VAT or a GLN number. For easier use, you can, for each identifier, define a user-friendly name that we call a "label".

When you deploy an "PEPPOL In Gateway", the gateway is registered as an Access Point for the receiver and document types in a Babelway SMP and the Babelway SMP is referenced in the SML for this participant.

The participant SML status tells you if the participant is registered in the PEPPOL SML.

PEPPOL In Gateway - Participant SML status

Some actions are available depending on the participant status :

Prepare migration : Let you start the participant migration to another SMP than Babelway. It will generate a migration key that need to be exchange with the new SMP.
Migrate : If the participant is registered to another SMP in the SML, this action lets you migrate him to a Babelway SMP. The migration key received from the old SMP need to be entered.
Register : If the participant is not registered at all in the SML, you can register it by clicking on this action.

Registered Documents

Registered documents are UBL document type that are customized and categorized by PEPPOL business flows (i.e. : An UBL v2.1 Invoice that follows business specifications of the PEPPOL BIS 4a v2.0 ). One or more document types can be choose to configure the gateway.

PEPPOL In Gateway - Document types

Message Level Response

A Message Level Response (MLR) can be sent back to the sender of the PEPPOL message. A MLR is a business acknowledgment that tells the sender if the received message follows business rules related to the document type and business flow. You can choose the "MLR strategy" in the Gateway IN configuration.

PEPPOL Directory

Participants registered in the Babelway SMP can optionnally also be published to PEPPOL Directory.

Once your gateway is deployed, you will be able to see the defined identifiers in the PEPPOL directory (http://directory.peppol.eu for Production, and http://test-directory.peppol.eu for Test environment).

Undeploying your gateway will delete the participants from the PEPPOL Directory.

Note that the process to add/delete participants to the PEPPOL Directory is asynchronous and might take some time until it actually shows up.

Here is the summary of gateway properties:

PEPPOL environment	Choose between the regular PEPPOL production infrastructure, connected to the SML, or the test infrastructure, connected to the SMK. The default is Production
Identifiers Values	The values identifying the PEPPOL participants. All values are mandatory. The option 'Publish to PEPPOL directory' will only be taken into account if the PEPPOL participants is registered in the SMP of Babelway. The 'label' of the PEPPOL participants will be used as the PEPPOL participant name in the PEPPOL directory (if the option is checked).
Registered Documents	List of documents accepted by this gateway and registered in the SMP.
Message Level Response	Using this option you can decide to send MLR directly after message reception. The options are : Never send MLR MLR will never be sent automatically. The MLR is completely under the responsibility of the environment maintainer. This is the right choice if you want to generate a MLR based on the response of a back-end system or if the partner is not supporting MLR. On invalid document, send MLR and stop message processing with an error MLR is sent automatically if the incoming message is not conforming to the documents customization business rules (schematron rules). In this case the MLR is return and the message is marked as 'ERROR' in Babelway. With this strategy, the 'SUCCESS' business acknowledgement flow can be based on the response of a back-end system. On invalid document, send MLR and continue message processing MLR is sent automatically if the incoming message is not conforming to the documents customization business rules (schematron rules). In this case the MLR is return but the message is not marked as 'ERROR' in Babelway. With this strategy, the 'SUCCESS' business acknowledgement flow can be based on the response of a back-end system. Always send MLR and stop message processing with an error MLR will always be sent back. An negative MLR is sent if the message is not conforming to the documents customization business rules (schematron rules), a positive MLR is sent otherwise. The message is put in error in case of a negative MLR. Always send MLR and continue message processing MLR will always be sent back. An negative MLR is sent if the message is not conforming to the documents customization business rules (schematron rules), a positive MLR is sent otherwise. The message is not put in error in case of a negative MLR.
Participant SML status	The status of the participant in the PEPPOL SML
Access Point Key	The peppol key you received as an access point. If none is provided, the Babelway's key will be used.
Contact Email	The primary technical contact for these participants. When a PEPPOL registration is made, it a 'technical details' field can be provided. This will allow other Peppol users to contact you directly. If left empty, Babelway's contact email will be used.
Perform SMP Redirection	Check this box if you want Babelway to manage the SMP registration (making the participant visible in the network) but direct the actual document traffic to a different Access Point infrastructure. • Unchecked (Default): Messages are received by Babelway. • Checked: Messages are routed to the external URL defined below.
SMP Hostname	The hostname of the external access point that should receive messages.
Certificate Subject Unique Identifier	Holds the Subject Unique Identifier of the certificate of the destination SMP. A client should validate that the Subject Unique Identifier of the certificate used to sign the resource at the destination SMP matches the Subject Unique Identifier published in the redirecting SMP.

Note:

If a file name specified in “Message In” or “Message Out” contains the ~ (tilde) character, any Chromium-based browser will automatically replace the tilde with an underscore (_)
when you download the file from the Babelway interface. For more information, see the Chromium issue report: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=479419
The maximum file size accepted by this gateway is 100 MB.

Validation:

The Peppol document can be validated online before being sent with for example this tool : https://peppol-tools.ademico-software.com/ui/document-validator